In one of the first moves to demonstrate that Palm Solutions Group (the hardware guys) and operating-system spinout PalmSource (the software guys) are two autonomous companies, Palm Solutions Group (PSG) has announced that it will be making a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) available for all of its Tungsten handheld offerings: the Bluetooth-enabled "T," the wireless wide area network-enabled "W," and the Wi-Fi enabled "C."
The change in strategy also affects the T2, a successor to the Tungsten T that was launched last week.
The reason this announcement demonstrates the autonomy between the two formerly married organizations is that PalmSource is so far content to live without Java. For Palm users, however, including a JVM means access to more enterprise, and consumer, applications.
PalmSourceCEO David Nagel has repeatedly insisted that the Palm OS ecosystem can continue to thrive and grow without including a JVM as a standard component.
In a recent interview, Nagel told me he had no problem with providing both development environments --- Palm OS and Java --- to developers. "But Sun is very difficult to work with," said Nagel. "They do not make it easy. We were one of the early members of the JCP [Java Community Process]. We tried to build a PDA profile, sort of a Java 2 Micro Edition (the mobile JVM) grown up a little bit. But we decided that was sort of a bifurcation, and that it created more problems than it solved. Sun didn't like it. They wouldn't support it, so we decided that we weren't going to go through with it and that we would leave J2ME be." In light of that, Nagel is content with the 19,000 applications he says are available for the Palm OS (up from 12,500 from last year) and the 280,000 developers.
But PSG director of strategic alliances Chris Morgan wasn't satisfied. In June, he struck a deal with IBM to include that company's version of J2ME, known as WebSphere Micro Edition (WME, formerly known as "J9"), in all Tungstens moving forward. The move means that PSG now gets to tap into both the Palm OS and Java ecosystems, the latter weighing in at 3 million developers and growing. According to Morgan, "The way I look at is, we now have 3,280,000 developers."
To the extent that developers are one of the three lynchpins (in addition to applications and users/installations) to most ecosystems in our industry, the Tungsten ecosystem appears to have gotten a significant boost. For PSG, this is a smart move, particularly because the Tungstens haven't been doing as well as the company had originally hoped they would..
This is good news for Java developers, too. Prior to the announcement, Java developers had limited access to the Palm market. If they wanted their applications to run on the Palm OS, their only choice was to redevelop their applications natively for the Palm platform, or to get their target customers to buy, install, and configure a JVM from a third party like Insignia. With this announcement, the "anywhere" part of the Java promise --- the ability to write software once and deploy it anywhere --- is closer to reality. The target for Java developers will grow by the number of Tungstens that are in the market.
"A good example is SAP," said Morgan. "They have a Java-based mobile engine. If you don't have a virtual machine on your device, you can't run it. You will see that across other things. Games, for example, is a huge business for carriers, and the end users are excited about playing them."
Even so, speaking of the availability of the JVM on PSG's Zires (which target consumers), as well as the Treo's (which PSG will inherit through the Handspring acquisition), company spokesperson Kristine Boyden said, "We decided to start with our powerful Tungsten line. If our customers tell us they want the Java solution on our Zire, we will deliver it. Same goes for any other product in our line, now or in the future."
Why did PSG partner with IBM? According to Morgan, "Our only interest is in deploying a Java implementation that has passed the test of Sun's Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK). IBM's WME passed the TCK test and is fully certified and will eventually be built into all Tungsten branded devices."
That "eventually" refers to a hitch with the roll-out of version 5 of PalmSource's Palm OS. Whereas the Tungsten C is natively a Palm OS 5.0 device, the Tungsten W ships with version 4 of the Palm OS. For this reason, the first version of WME that PSG will be making available (later this summer) will run natively on Palm OS 4. For users on Palm OS 5, WME will run in that operating system's PACE platform. PACE, which stands for Palm Application Compatibility Environment, is what enables the forward compatibility of most Palm OS 4-based applications with Palm OS 5.
One of the gating factors, according to Morgan, was the availability of the ARM processors now being used in the Tungstens. Prior to that, the slower Dragonball processors normally associated with Palm devices didn't have the horsepower to run a JVM. Morgan claims that, eventually, all Tungstens will be running Palm 5 at the bare minimum and that a native port of WME to version 5 will be available. He isn't saying when.
Neither is he saying whether PSG might do what Research in Motion did. RIM turned its Blackberry into a pure Java machine and recoded its built-in applications in Java. "Recoding apps is definitely an option for us. We can start to look at all the applications --- browsers, e-mail, etc --- and decide which is the most efficient way--to write it for the Palm OS or for Java. We will have to make a decision. But for now, we're not doing this as an exclusion of Palm OS APIs. We're making sure the development community has a choice."
To prove just how autonomous PSG is, I asked Morgan the Microsoft question. After all, if he's free to explore Java without recriminations from PalmSource, why not consider another runtime environment: the mobile version of .Net, otherwise known as .Net Compact. According to Morgan, "We're free to do that, so we asked Microsoft. They said no. So, as far as I know, it's not available to be licensed. If it was, we'd love to talk to them about it."
As far as availability for existing Tungsten users, Morgan says there will be different distribution channels for WME (which will be free)-- primarily the Web and CD.
For over a year now, I've been hounding PalmSource's Nagel about the Java question. The only way to keep the PDA platform battle interesting is to make sure that neither side succeeds at dividing and conquering. Currently, Microsoft has its opponents --- Sun, Symbian, and Palm --- well divided. As long as that's the case, Microsoft stands a better chance of repeating the success it has had with Windows in the handheld space. Now, it appears as though at least one part (PSG) of the Palm community has seen that light.
As for the other part (PalmSource), I asked Morgan what he would do if, after PSG was well into its contract with IBM, PalmSource finally decided to package a JVM with the operating system. Said Morgan, "We'll cross that bridge if we get there."
What do you think? Can the Palm OS ecosystem manage a transition into the Java world? Should it? Or should PSG and PalmSource leave well enough alone. Share your thoughts and opinions with your fellow readers using ZDNet's TalkBack. Or write to me at david.berlind@cnet.com. If you're looking for my commentaries on other IT topics, check the archives.
